Last game you finished, tell us about it

June 28th, 2012, 00:36

ill be giving secret world ago probably despite only playing a couple of MMOs. i tried Age of Conan for a few weeks but didn't enjoy it at all. Ragnar Tourquist is the main reason i tried that but this game really seems to have his hand in as I'm not sure how invovled at all he even was in Age of Conan.

-- ---when we figure out how to build guillotines for corporations the new revolution will have begun---

Story
You are a marine known as Alcatraz who are sent into New York to deal with a virus outbreak when your submarine is attacked. When you get to the surface your friends are killed by an alien ship and you are left wounded. You are saved by Prophet from Crysis 1 who give you his nanosuit before telling you to finish what he started. What follows is a romp through a mostly demolished New York City where you fight forces who seek to get your suit along with regular aliens.

Engine: Graphics & Sound
Best out there. Really. This is one game that make you amazed by it's looks and it spares almost nothing. I guess I could have wished for some better facial animations but that's it. And the sound is great as well.

Gameplay
Modern shooters tend to be limited without some new gimmick and the nanosuit is the core element here, when you get the hang of it you switch between stealth and armor all the time while keeping an eye on your energy. Out of energy usually means death. As long as you have the energy you can perform power sprints, power jumps and power bashing, enable infrared vision, stealth and armor. This basically makes you into a super hero and it's quite fun. The shooter mechanics are well polished and it's evident that CryTek are one of the masters of shooters.

In some ways, Crysis 2 is a step up from Crysis 1, in others it's a step down. Compared to your average shooter Crysis 2 is more open as you usually have more than one way to beat an area and the areas are often large enough to make sniping useful and stealth fun but it's faster (and more deadly) to bash right in. Compared to Crysis 1 it's very linear and many maps are completely linear. This is too bad as the openness of Crysis 1 was the games greatest strength when it came to gameplay. I still wanted to mention though that the game is still average compared to other shooters.

The most glaring issue with Crysis 2 is it's A.I. Considering how well polished everything else is, the A.I. stands out. Prepare to see foes stuck in the environment, who stop in their track, turns around and run the other way without any reason to do so, who just walk past you like they didn't see you standing in front of them, large foes who get stuck running in doorways (easily exploited) etc. etc.

Verdict
Crysis 2 is a gotta play game for anyone who have the hardware to play it. While it's not the best shooter, it's capacity is sometimes underutilized, it's polished enough and it's unique visuals gives an experience that definitely rise the bar for other titles.

-- Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind. - John F Kennedy
An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind. - Mahatma Gandhi
The world is my country. To do good is my religion. My mind is my own church. This simple creed is all we need to enjoy peace on earth. - Thomas Paine

Finally managed to finish the game, and it was one beautiful ride. I loved all the thought that went into the game, and it just oozes of content. I mean, I managed to get the good ending, but I've on youtube for other endings and I'm surprised at the possibilities.

Spoiler

I actually didn't even hear about or manage to forge that Immortal Blade which you can use to commit suicide.
The ending cinematic was a bit of weird one. Does that mean the Named one is going to spend the rest of his life fighting? Was that the Blood War I kept hearing about? It felt a bit weird seeing him randomly propped on the field of battle. I mean I remember reading that he was a geographer or a cartographer before being turned immortal, or something like that, right?

Anyway, I've had a blast with it. The best story in an rpg I've ever played. Not the best story in a game, the Legacy of Kain series still holds that title, but I think I can honestly say it's the second best story after that. Just brilliant what they managed to achieve with mostly just text. Very nicely written. And thoughtful. And just touched on so many notes. I actually had hair stand up on my neck multiple times, especially at major encounters.

Some of my favorite memories:

Spoiler

When getting into the tomb you left for yourself, and reading the message you left yourself about Morte. Don't trust the skull.
Talking to Ravel (I think I missed something here, because some time after defeating her, I went back to Sigil, to Mebeth in Ragpicker's Square, and she talked as if she were an incarnation of Ravel. So I'll have to check back on that.
Talking to the Pillar of Skulls
Meeting your 3 incarnations
And finally merging with your mortality, which I was able to do even though I didn't have the weapon to threaten him with. Which was very cool.

I also noticed, after checking some walkthroughs that I missed some content. I never bumped into Nordom, or the Lady of Pain, or some others.

The last game I finished was yesterday - Mass Effect 2. I know that Bioware/ Origin is regarded as a dirty word in the world of "true" RPG but they tell a magnificent story which has pace and thrills. It felt like a hybrid neither a FPS or a RPG but something inbetween.

I have no regrets in spending 40 hours or so playing this game. The good points:-

1. Great story with tension. Surprises - I didn't read any ME2 reviews or posts in the last two years - both nice and not so nice.
2. Great gameplay - good use of limited ammo and power uses.
3. Old friends from ME 1 are available.
4. It cost me £5.
5. Able to remap keys to make conflict scenes easier to control.
6. Able to remap allocation of skill points and swap one of the biotics for a fee.

The not so good points.

1. Mining, hacking and bypass felt like fillers.
2. Rubbish documentation. This meant I spent 10 hours playing to understand how the system works and then restarted.
3. Prefer to see some skills split out with more points per level.
4. I know the story - will I want to replay again?

My main play was as an Infiltrator. Found myself using a combinations of SMG with disruptor ammo or Incinerate. At times the sniper rifle was useful for 1st strikes and taking down rocket launchers.

Ran perfectly on my six year old Dell XPS 600 duo core PC. I have a 2 year old HD graphics card and 5Gb of memory. Sounded great using the on-board sound chip (even better using headphones). So technically good.

Dead Island
Dead Island is the second first-person action roleplaying game dedicated for Co-Op that I know (the other is Borderlands). So is it any good?

Story
Banoi Island is a resort for the rich and famous but also the four heroes you can select between as your character throughout the game. After a night of wild partying you wake up in the middle of a zombie outbreak. After getting bitten but rescued it's revealed that you are somehow immune. For the rest you become their only hope. That means you are go out there to find food, transportation and you know, the stuff survivors need during a zombie outbreak. Soon enough you get in contact with an unknown man over the radio who promises you help to get off the island, but you have to reach him first which is difficult since he's pretty much on the other side of the island.

I have to make a specific mention of the quests in DI. While they are no shakespeare, they feel more like you are actually helping someone than in Borderlands where you simply pump a terminal. Each quest is delivered through actual dialogue here.

DLC
I did finish the DLC for the game as well. The story driven one that is (I will not mention it's name here, look it up after finishing the main game). I recommend all of those who played the base game to the end to grab it. It gives you a very different perspective on both the game and the ending.

Engine: Graphics & Sound
Dead Island is optimized for consoles so the graphics looks a bit dated on PC, but it makes up in detail. The sandbox maps are mostly handmade which makes each section feel unique. You can often navigate simply at looking at your surroundings without looking at the map. This isn't true in the entire game however and sometimes you have to rely on the minimap to find the way. The games damage system is particulary unique, DI might just be one of the goriest games out there. Prepare to see heads and limbs chopped up, broken, squished and bodies burnt to crisp.

The audio deserves an extra mention. This is one game you benefit from having surround speakers. Each zombie have a very distinct sound and you can just by listening extract a lot of information from each area. Normal zombies, "walkers", are the most common opponent in the game and whenever you hear more than their growls you need to be careful because one of the tougher zombies are nearby and you do not want to get close. Not only that, but this is a Beat-Em-Up game in first person. That means you can't see what's behind your character, but you can hear. I could plan combos, hack two zombies in front of me and a third behind me in a fluid motion simply by detecting the zombie behind me through sound.

Gameplay
There's a lot to speak about here. If you have ever played Borderlands before you can imagine a Beat-Em-Up borderlands with weapon customization and stronger NPC interaction. If you haven't played Borderlands then do so first, because Borderlands I would say is a better game. Unless the zombie theme attracts you more.

Dead Island is an action roleplaying game. The roleplaying mechanics here is pretty much what you would get in Diablo; a selection of 4 different characters/classes, each with a couple of skilltrees, many ways to earn experience points and on top of that randomized looted weapons.

The characters follow your old formula, a tank who can take more punishment, a glass cannon who's squishy yet deadly, a firearms specialist and a throwing weapon specialist. The four characters have a stronger background and sometimes during the plot this gets important, but no not expect yourself to feel much for them. Specialization isn't that interesting really, think for a moment and you realize that most of their skill trees are crap and you get enough points to buy all the skills you like until the end of the game.

There are a lot of weapons in the game. Each type comes in various appearences and with special qualities. They are colored in white, green, blue, purple and orange which means that they are better than average. Weapons also improve in levels and you want a weapon close to your own level unless it's colored. Weapons can also be upgraded to be stronger, faster and more durable. They can also be upgraded with mods such as adding electricity damage or fire damage. Weapons also decay, so you have to repair them a lot. This is actually one of the games flaws, since you have to repair so often you are cycling through 3-4 at a time, this and since you need to upgrade weapons to your level all the time you never get the "beloved weapon" feel. Later in the game you get firearms. They do not decay but bullets are few outside areas filled with bandits who use firearms themselves. Beyond melee and firearms there are also a lot of throwable weapons such as molotovs and grenades, some of these you can build yourself.

Dead Island is a very optimized game but it's not without flaws. The most glaring one is that the game autoequips the latest weapon you picked up, including medkits and alcohol. Prepare to accidently drink alcohol over and over again and end up using medkits when you didn't mean to. The game also autodrops your equipped weapon if you are overloaded when picking something new up. I accidently dropped a fully upgraded and modded pistol which I realized only after leaving the area.

Verdict
Dead Island is a really solid title. It's packed with content and you can tell there was a lot of effort put down in this one. That said, the game lacks that rinse-and-repeat feel you get in Borderlands where you level up all the time and find really awesome weapons. Here leveling is slow, it takes up to level 20 before you feel you are getting better and weapons are almost always "meh", often only giving slightly better damage than the four you already use. The decay were too fast and were just annoying. Modding didn't feel realistic. The characters aren't likeable and it's difficult to get emotionally attached to anyone. All that can be overlooked if you seek a coop-title that allow you and 3 friends to go through the game together.

Dead Island is a cracked gem.

-- Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind. - John F Kennedy
An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind. - Mahatma Gandhi
The world is my country. To do good is my religion. My mind is my own church. This simple creed is all we need to enjoy peace on earth. - Thomas Paine

With the criticism the game got I expected it to be really bad, but then it was much better than I expected. The two types of bad I could think of to compare it to would be Force Unleashed 2 which is well polished but with an extreme lack of content and Gothic 3 which was prematurely released but with a ton of content. Dead Island was both well polished and filled with content. With better writing and some Blizzard-style tweaking it would have been great.

-- Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind. - John F Kennedy
An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind. - Mahatma Gandhi
The world is my country. To do good is my religion. My mind is my own church. This simple creed is all we need to enjoy peace on earth. - Thomas Paine

Originally Posted by JemyM
With the criticism the game got I expected it to be really bad, but then it was much better than I expected. The two types of bad I could think of to compare it to would be Force Unleashed 2 which is well polished but with an extreme lack of content and Gothic 3 which was prematurely released but with a ton of content. Dead Island was both well polished and filled with content. With better writing and some Blizzard-style tweaking it would have been great.

I found it disappointing, but I never had the chance to play co-op, and my expectations for single-player were much too high. I quit halfway through the single-player campaign because I could no longer stand the repetitive fetch-quests that make up the majority of the game. I also hated how zombies and items respawned in the exact same locations within minutes.. which made it obvious that the game was geared towards multi-player. I did think the setting was really good, but the single-player experience was ruined by by the mediocre gameplay for me.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I found it disappointing, but I never had the chance to play co-op, and my expectations for single-player were much too high. I quit halfway through the single-player campaign because I could no longer stand the repetitive fetch-quests that make up the majority of the game. I also hated how zombies and items respawned in the exact same locations within minutes.. which made it obvious that the game was geared towards multi-player. I did think the setting was really good, but the single-player experience was ruined by by the mediocre gameplay for me.

I am currently playing the game in coop with 3 friends and 4 different characters and that definitely brings out more of the game. The four characters are very distinctive in their specializations and roles but only after the first 20 levels or so.

Indeed, the game is very diablo-like in it's respawn system, but beyond the first levels you rarely return to the same area twice. When I say blizzard-style tweaking the games weakest point is it's first levels where you are cycling through weapons faster than underwear, carry a ton of weak and semibroke weapons and do revisit weapon spawning point just to get a level-upgraded edition of whatever weapon you use. Skills in the first 3 teirs do not really feel they do anything and you die all the time. With some tweaking this stage could have been made less brutal and frustrating.

Once you reached about tier 4 the game begins to feel more fluid and your character more responsive. You then have access to your first colored weapons that lasts long enough for you to like them, upgrade them and mod them. Thats when the game begins to feel fun in my opinion. Chances are great that you screwed up your skillpoints though and without respec or a save editor you may have crippled your character for the rest of the game early on.

-- Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind. - John F Kennedy
An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind. - Mahatma Gandhi
The world is my country. To do good is my religion. My mind is my own church. This simple creed is all we need to enjoy peace on earth. - Thomas Paine

Good: Very good graphics. Nice Atmosphere and characters that you somewhat care for. Story is decent, basicly a mashup of scenes from the series but with new characters thrown in, it really feels like Walking Dead. Voice acting is solid.

Bad: Cut-scenes with button presses is as dull as gaming can get (not sure i would call it gaming, it's not how i define it at least). Far too few ways to fuck up, nothing to explore or secrets to find.. In the first half of the episode you have to answer questions that you, the player, doesnt know anything about since there's no presentation of the main characters previous history, it seemed a bit stupid to me.

It's probably an 8+/10 for someone who likes this genre. I only bought it because it's Walking Dead, i knew i wouldnt care for the gameplay. I'd rate it something like 6/10, at 18 EUR it was a good buy for the 5 episodes.

Avernum: Escape from the pit
Avernum: Escape from the Pit is a remake of the first Avernum, which in turn is a remake of the first Exile game (Exile: Escape from the pit). As I have no experience with the first Avernum game, and very limited experience with the first Exile game (played a demo for it way back), I can't comment on how different it is.

Graphics
The graphics in Avernum: Escape from the Pit is functional, but not exactly good. There are some still images shown during loading screens and certain events in the game that looks beautiful, but apart from that, the graphics in Avernum is nothing to write home about. Had it not been for its high resolution, one might have mistaken it for a late 90's game.
That being said, it is often quite easy to see what things are supposed to be, and it does not suffer form any real clutter, so spotting important things on the ground & walls is easy enough. The spell effects are distinct and it is easy to tell exactly what is happening during combat.

Sound
The sound design is probably Avernum's weakest part. There are relatively few sound effects in the game, and while none of them are actually bad, they are repeated far too often. Hearing the same sound repeated over and over while in a major city does get a bit annoying , in particular as it is not generic enough, so it stands out each time it is used.

Gameplay
The gameplay department is where Avernum really shines. The game is seen from an isometric perspective and combat is turn & grid-based. There is a fare amount of tactics involved in how you position your characters, in order to block enemies from rushing your weaker characters, preventing them from hitting too many characters with AoE abilities and making sure that your own AoE abilities hit as many enemies as possible.
The game keeps on introducing new abilities & spells as the game goes along, which keeps combat feeling fresh. It never actually invalidates any of the old abilities either, apart from early summoning spells, and near the endgame, I was using almost all my spells.
Leveling up characters is a joy. While each individual level has a relatively small impact on your character's overall strength, you are given a lot of freedom in exactly how you want to develop your characters. As there are no classes, you can make a frontline fighter mage if you want to. The game still rewards you for specializing, to a degree, but if you feel that you need a backup healer, you can turn one of your other characters into that.

Story & Writing
While the overall story was not amazing, it worked quite well. You are a bunch of prisoners, who are thrown down into a huge underground cavern, where they throw down prisoners & people they want to get rid of. This is a dangerous region, filled with monsters and other nasties, and you want to find your way out, and get vengeance on the people who did this to you.
The writing on the other hand is well done. There is a lot of text to read in this game, and you want to read it, to find out what is going on, what people think, and so on.

overall
This is a lengthy game, steam says that I spent 44h on this game, and while this involves a bit of idling time (I left the game on while doing other things), expect to spend at least 35h in order to see the actual end of this game. And the game remained fun & interesting all the way through. Consider this game highly recommended.

I played Fable 1 on PC and Fable 2 on Xbox 360, so decided to complete the hat trick and play the PC version of Fable 3 (plus DLC). The game got a very bad press when it was released so I was curious to see if it was as bad as people say.

Well, it is certainly the weakest of the three games, but I wouldn't say it was as awful as Angry Joe made it sound. Yes, features have been stripped out (eg no health indicator, no minimap) with little justification. Yes, crap features have been added (the Sanctuary is simply a stupid and tedious way to organise menus and inventory, although I generally worked around it - having to visit a room in the Sanctuary to change weapons meant I just didn't change weapons very often). But gameplay-wise and graphics-wise, its very similar to Fable 2, so if you enjoyed Fable 2 you will probably get at least something out of Fable 3.

Another major criticism of Fable 3 is that it wrong-foots you halfway through, switching you from the standard RPG-lite fare of Fable 2 to a King/Queen simulation where you make binary choices (build an orphanage which costs the royal treasury money, or a brothel which makes money?). This pissed a lot of people off because a/ it changes the nature of the game and b/ because "good" choices cost the Treasury money, which in turn means by the end of the game you may not have enough money to save your kingdom. I didn't mind the latter as it was one of the very few bits of real choice in the game. Up to this point, the whole "good/evil" choices thing was much less well done than in the previous games. Indeed, Fable 3 just doesn't seem particularly well set up to play the standard evil role - for example after the final fight

Spoiler

when you are cradling your mentors head in your arms, this just doesn't fit the role of an evil king who cares little about other people.

Graphics-wise, the game looks pretty enough on PC, again very similar to Fable 2 in style, with a slightly cartoonish, otherworldy look (too much bloom for my liking though). The steampunk additions, which were creeping in during Fable 2, are much more prevalent here but fit the world well, with Albion now peppered with factories, mills, monorails, mortars and other advances in technology.

As mentioned above, gameplay is similar to Fable 2 and (for me) too simple and repetitive to be a lot of fun. Melee is limited to hit, block, and charged attack; shooting to, well, shoot and charged shot; magic to single target and area effects. Melee is considerably underpowered compared to the other two, and I was sufficiently bored by the combat that I just ended up constantly shooting enemies with my pistol as it was quicker.

DLC is ho-hum, Understone Quest Pack adds a bit of unremarkable content, the Traitors Keep is a bit meatier and follows on from the main quest. Once you've completed the main quest though, particularly depending on whether you liked the resolution, you may find yourself with little motivation to do much more.

All in all, Fable 3 is more like Fable 2.5, its OK but there are far better RPGs out there - probably one for completionists really. Edit: PS it runs with Games for Windows Live, so bear that in mind if you are a GFWL hater, although for the record I had zero problems with it in 30 hours or so play.

Story
1987 "Metal Gear" was released to MSX (but were perhaps more famous on the NES). In that game Solid Snake were sent to the military base Outer Heaven to deal with a terrorist group. Back then the game was revolutionary not only for being focused on stealth but also because it actually had a story which was unusual for a '87 game. In the following titles the series continued the story about Solid Snake in a futuristic setting. But Metal Gear Solid 3 did something different, it was set during the Cold War and began to tell the story about the primary villain in "Metal Gear" also commonly known as Snake. This prequel was later followed up by Portable Ops and now Peace Walker ties up the bag.

The Metal Gear series presents one of the best written stories in video gaming history. For those who have yet to play the games I will not spoil it, if you never played the games before you can either play the games upon order of release or you may play them in chronological order starting with MGS3/Portable Ops/Peace Walker, then Metal Gear, MG2, Metal Gear Solid, MGS2 and finally MGS4.

For those who thought PO was a step down, Peace Walker isn't. PW represents much more of a true sequel to MGS3 and is definitely one of the series strongest titles.

Engine: Graphics & Sound
The game pushes the Portable Playstation to the max. Most of the time I didn't feel I was playing a PSP title. That said, the PSP do have a dithering that the PS3 remake do not so you may be better of grabbing that version instead. The voice acting is as usual phenomenal and it's amazing how much voice they pushed into this game. Every scene is fully voice acted and considering how massive the game is do not expect a game skimped for the handheld format.

Gameplay
Peace Walker isn't your ordinary game. If you played Portable Ops you know a bit about what to expect though. Peace Walker is part a stealth-game like the earlier titles in the series and part a management game in which you build up the army. Men recruited on the field can be put into different tasks which usually boils down to greater efficiency at developing new items that snake can use in the field. There's also Outer Ops which allows you to send soldiers to missions all over the world which brings home goodies or your men in bodybags. Finally you get to develop your own Metal Gear if you like.

Then you got a ton of missions aside from the main missions that progress the storyline. These Extra Ops contains various challenges and opportunities for you to find more men and unlock more schematics that can be developed into equipment for Snake.

In time, you will have much more items than you will ever need, which can of course be used in the games online mode that allows you to do co-op missions with others over the web.

Peace Walker is so packed with content that even if I finished it's main story after 2 months casually playing the game I could easily go on for another month just unlocking items, missions and secrets.

Verdict
If you have played previus titles Peace Walker is a must. While Portal Ops was a bit of a letdown, Peace Walker is a real and important part of the series that ties the bag together and got great story and amazing gameplay.

-- Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind. - John F Kennedy
An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind. - Mahatma Gandhi
The world is my country. To do good is my religion. My mind is my own church. This simple creed is all we need to enjoy peace on earth. - Thomas Paine

-- “ Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.“ (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)

As far as I know no. I actually bought my PSP to play Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops. I had ruled out the platform as dead a long time ago and then Peace Walker came along. Damn Kojima, this game is simply in a class of it's own, making "regular" games feel lacking and me consider if the game got too much content.

-- Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind. - John F Kennedy
An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind. - Mahatma Gandhi
The world is my country. To do good is my religion. My mind is my own church. This simple creed is all we need to enjoy peace on earth. - Thomas Paine

Spec Ops: The line
First of all, anything in spoiler tags here are actually spoilers, serious ones. Don't read them if you plan to play the game! Also, I played the PC version (on my crummy computer, it was a surprisingly well optimized game)

Spec Ops: The Line was a bit of an unexpected release. It was marketed as yet another modern day 3rd person cover based military shooter, and well it was, but the tone of the game is vastly different. This is not a game that tries to glorify war and make you feel big and macho, it is a game that tries to make you feel bad for what you re doing, that tries to show the horrors of war. It is somewhat based on the book "Heart of Darkness", the same book that inspired Apocalypse Now (I have neither read the book, nor watched the movie, so I don't know how close it is to either).

Graphics
From a technical point of view, Spec Ops is nothing special. Everything looks the way it should, and there were no odd animation glitches or anything like that. From an artistic point of view, the game managed to capture the city of Dubai pretty well, and many of the landscapes looked beautiful, in an eery kind of way. Do note that I played the game on the lowest graphics settings, so it is possible that the game looks a lot better on higher settings.

Sound
Again, nothing special. The voice actors do a good job at portraying the characters they are supposed to play, and most things sound the way you expect them to. One thing that I disliked about it was how poorly the in combat kill confirmations and such meshed with the overall theme of the game. They felt too "macho", and it sounded like the soldiers were almost enjoying themselves, from time to time.

Story
The city of Dubai has suffered a horrible catastrophe, a storm was almost buried the city in sand. Another company disobey direct orders, and enter the city to help the population. As you and your team enter the city, you quickly see that not everything is the way it is supposed to be, you are soon attacked by the local population are are forced to fight your way through. At this point the game feels like any other military shooter set in the middle east, where Arabs are the "obvious" bad guys. Of course you quickly find out that things are not quite so simple. While you were innocent, they had a good reason for thinking that you were not. And telling anything more would be too much of a spoiler. During the rest of the game, you and your two companions make your way through the city, trying to do what you think is the right thing.
The game actually lets you make a few decisions along the way, and while I don't think they have any long term impact (I've only done a single playthrough), it is at least interesting to see how the game tries to force you into situations without any clear answer. One interesting thing about these is the way the game presents you with choices. You are usually given 2 obvious choices, but as far as I could tell, there was also always a 3rd option. One interesting use of achievements here is that it allows you to see what choices other people made. When you make a choice, the game gives you an achievement for it, and you can see how "popular" the different options were. Judging by the steam achievement list, a good amount of people were able to spot the 3rd option in many of these cases, but a frighteningly large amount of people also decided to take the "shoot first, and don't think about it" option in one of these situations.

Gameplay
If you just looked at the gameplay, you would be excused for thinking that this is another 3rd person modern day military shooter. There is nothing in that regard that really sets this game apart. Everything works well enough, and the gameplay feels fluid.
It meshes poorly with the games tone though. "War is fun", is almost what the gameplay says, while the story tries to tell you something entirely different. You are also, by the gameplay, encouraged to move up and execute wounded soldiers. The final issue with with achievements, every so often an achievement will pop up and say "You killed X soldiers with weapon type Y" or something along that line. It actually detracts from the game a little, as it almost encouraged you to go around and kill people, just to get achievements.
There were a good amount of weapons in the game, and most of them felt like they had a place, but the weapon balance was not spot on. I for one found shotguns to be almost useless, and thus did not use them past the first section, unless I had to. The game was a bit stingy with ammunition, so only sticking to one or two weapons is not an option.

Overall
This game managed to make me feel bad.

Spoiler

At one point you are forced to launch some white phosphorous rounds into an enemy encampment, and then walk through it, and at the end the section you also see that they did not just hit the intended targets. I had to turn off the game after this, because of how it made me feel

And that was intended. This was not an attempt to glorify war, it was an attempt to make war look horrible, and to show the hard situations that soldiers have to face.

Spoiler

In a late game section one of your men gets capture by a mob, as he is wounded & separated from the team, and killed by it. The mob has a very good reason to see you as the enemy, and they quickly turn on you, throwing stones and closing in on you. Don't do anything and the crowd will kill you as well, shoot them and you are a monster. I'm glad that I managed to spot the option of "shooting in the air to scare them away", because actually shooting at the civilians would have been horrible

It is by no means a perfect game, the gameplay meshes poorly with the tone that it tries to set, and it is also short (about 1h longer than Modern warfare 1). I have not played a lot of games like this, so to me the difficulty felt pretty good on normal, but I guess anyone with genre experience will want to crank it up a bit.

Spec Ops: The Line is an interesting game, and one that I don't regret buying. I would recommend that anyone who wants to see a non-jingoistic modern day shooter gives this game a chance, because it is worth it.